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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

As many of you know, I am a big fan of the DiJulius Group when it comes to customer service. I read John DiJulius’ weekly blog religiously. In my humble opinion, their ideas, concepts, programs and solutions regarding customer service are simply the best. Real “take away” stuff that can improve your customer service, no matter how good you think it is. I thought this festive season when we are exchanging gifts, and wishing each other well, might be a good time to reflect on one idea that John had in his blog back in March of this year. Here it is. Thanks John.

You Say You Have Relationships with your Customers? Prove it!
March 15, 2017
By John DiJulius

In today’s world, the only thing that is separating companies from offering another commodity is the relationships they have with their customers. If you do not have a relationship with your customer, you better be the cheapest. Companies believe their product is superior, but there are a lot of smart professionals out there and comparable products. I have yet to have anyone disagree with the premise that relationships are what truly give us a distinct advantage. However, I believe that a high percentage of businesses do not know what a real relationship is. Just because you recognize your customer’s face or the sound of their voice does not mean you have a relationship.

BLACK & WHITEI am not a fan of platitudes unless they are backed by measurable action items. For instance, you tell me you have a relationship with your customer — great. Prove it. If you truly have a relationship with your customer, or anyone, then you should be able to tell me two or more things regarding F.O.R.D. about your customer.

F.O.R.D.

Family

Occupation

Recreation

Dreams

If you can tell me two or more things about their family, occupation, recreation, & dreams, you really do have a relationship. If not, then you are kidding yourself and you’d better be the least expensive because you have no emotional brand capital with your customers. I don’t care if you have to cheat and resource your CRM system or notes. Anytime you touch a customer via the phone, electronically or face-to-face, you should deliver one Customer Intelligence item about them. Customer Intelligence is what we know about our customers (i.e. F.O.R.D).

SHOW ME YOU CARE MORE ABOUT HELPING MY BUSINESS THAN JUST GETTING MY BUSINESS

It doesn’t matter how you collect customer intelligence. The critical piece is that you create a system that helps you pay more attention to hearing and obtaining your customer’s information so you can document and follow up to demonstrate that you are not like anyone else with whom they do business. Personally, my Customer Intelligence Notepad is always with my wallet, car keys and cell phone. I don’t leave home without it, so I can learn more about F.O.R.D. on each of my customers.

I learned about the F.O.R.D. acronym from one of our Secret Service Agents, Mr. Don Thorpe, who lives Secret Service in his daily life.

So how is your F.O.R.D scale during this holiday season?

It has been a very busy year here at ARCSI, A Division of ISSA. We wish you a most joyous holiday season and a happy and prosperous New Year. As always, we appreciate your support of ARCSI. Thank you.

Early Bird Pricing Expires on December 31

2018 Leadership Summit

April 19-21, 2018
Loews Ventana Canyon Resort | Tucson, Arizona

Designed especially for owners and key executive staff of residential and commercial cleaning companies, this event guarantees to be help you discover the secrets of successful leadership to help improve your bottom line.

The program is being highlighted by three nationally-known speakers that will walk you through:

Developing business strategies

Achieving personal career goals while building on professional relationships

The first-ever Leadership Summit features three national experts and we are excited to bring this event to you. Here are a few things you can read to get an idea of the knowledge and expertise of our speakers:

Power Score: Your Formula For Leadership Success

“The most useful book about leadership.”
That is what we hope you and your team will say about finishing Power Score.

Is your team running at full power?

Only 10% of leaders do.

That’s according to ghSMART, the bestselling team behind Who: The A Method for Hiring. Who has become the #1 best-selling and most-acclaimed book on the topic of hiring talented teams. Now Power Score provides a simple formula for how the best team deliver results.

The formula you are about to learn is based on the largest research of its kind, spanning over 15,000 careers with over nine million data points. The idea has been battle-tested for over two decades by leaders in every major industry. It works.

The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

By Jeff Haden (Available for purchase on January 9, 2018)

From Inc.com's most popular columnist, a counterintuitive – but highly practical – guide to finding and maintaining the motivation to achieve great things.
Haden shows us how to reframe our thinking about the relationship of motivation to success. He meets us at our level –at the beginning of any big goal we have for our lives, a little anxious and unsure about our way forward, a little burned by self-help books and strategies that have failed us in the past – and offers practical advice that anyone can use to stop stalling and start working on those dreams.

A great opportunity for a residential cleaning company is post construction clean up before the new homeowners move-in or a remodeler is finished with the new space. How do you price it? How do you manage it? What equipment do you need? How is it different from a deep clean?

Sharon Cowan of Cleaning Business Consulting Group will talk about how to price and manage a post-construction clean up job. She will share the tips and tricks to avoid losing your shirt. If you have questions for Sharon you can submit them to jeff@issa.com prior to the call for her to answer.

The HCT Certification differentiates you from other residential cleaning companies in your market as professional and knowledgeable.

The House Cleaning Technician (HCT) certification program teaches cleaning technicians how to go about doing just that. Becoming certified gives you the knowledge to be the best cleaner possible. Certified House Cleaning Techs understand all the surfaces they will find in clients' homes, how to clean them and (almost more importantly) how NOT to clean them.

Offered by the IICRC accredited school, the Institute for Service Excellence, the course is taught by Bruce Vance, ISE.

Cleaning professionals, both in-house and contractors, as well as carpet cleaning technicians venturing into hard surface floor care, are likely aware of the big slip and fall accident problem in the U.S. It is estimated there are about three million emergency room visits each year due to slip and fall accidents. This costs about $31 billion in direct medical expenses and results in approximately 20,000 deaths annually in this country.

While some slip and fall accidents are unavoidable, the vast majority can be prevented, and this is where cleaning professionals - both in professional cleaning and carpet care - come in. The ways we clean and maintain floors along with the floorcare cleaning solutions and finishes we apply to floors, all can have a significant impact on reducing and preventing slip and fall accidents.

To help us better understand slip and fall accidents and how to prevent them, we’ve asked Mike Watt, a floor care expert at Avmor, a leading manufacturer of floor and carpet cleaning products, to answer the following questions.

Mike, What’s actually happening when someone slips and falls?

As we walk, our bones and muscles in our legs expand and contract. We are transferring weight from one foot to the other. This causes our bodies to sway and moves our arms forward and backward. We also have a center of gravity (COG). This helps us stay surefooted as we move forward. But as we sway, there is a brief second or two when we are off balance and vulnerable to a fall. It could be caused by different factors, but the result is usually the same: we lose our balance, and, if we cannot catch ourselves, we fall.

Are all slip and fall accidents alike?

No, there are four types of slip and fall accidents. These are:

The trip and fall. This type of fall occurs when we encounter a foreign object in our path, such as a power cord or a step.

Stump and fall. This happens when we encounter an unseen obstruction on the walking surface.

Step and fall. Falls of this type occur when the surface we are walking on unexpectedly changes height, such as in the case of a dip in the surface.

Slip and fall. This type of fall happens when our balance is disrupted; we lose secure footing with the floor and fall.

Can floors be slip and fall prone?

Yes. A bank in Northern California was experiencing slip and fall accidents on a far too regular a basis. It had a large hard surface floor lobby that was cleaned and maintained every night. Cleaning workers were also using floor cleaning solutions and finishes designed to help prevent a slip and fall accident. However, the accidents continued.

After a more serious incident, an investigator was called in to examine the entire floor. While it could barely be seen by the naked eye, he found that the bank’s lobby floor was wavy. It was these slight inclines up and declines down that caused walkers to lose their balance and fall.

Can you measure how slippery a floor is?

Most definitely. For those cleaning professionals that care for large floor surfaces, purchasing a slip meter is highly recommended. These machines range in price from about $500 to several thousand dollars. Essentially what they do is measure the amount of “drag” or friction on the floor as the machine is moved over the floor. The meter will produce a reading of the floors coefficient of friction (COF). A COF of 0.60 is recommended.

Where does cleaning get involved?Keeping the floor clean is important for many reasons, but it will not necessarily prevent a slip and fall accident. When it comes to the products used on the floor – cleaners, glosses, finishes, etc. – there are two things cleaning and carpet cleaning professionals must remember:

Select products engineered to help prevent slip and fall accidents. An astute distributor can help with this, but the product label should also provide necessary information. While the wording may differ, a floor cleaning solution designed to prevent slip and fall accidents, for instance, might have the following noted on its product label: “field use has produced an average increase in slip resistance of xxxx SCOF (Static Coefficient of Friction) per application.” This indicates the product has been evaluated, verifying it can help prevent slip and fall accidents.

Select products from the same manufacturer. Most cleaning solution manufacturers make a broad range of products that work well when used with products from different brands. However, this is not necessarily true when it comes to floor care.

They typically engineer their floor care products to have a synergy: essentially this means, each Floorcare product in a specific line is designed to complement others in that product line. This is especially true when it comes to slip resistance. Look at the different products as links on a chain. Each product is designed to work with the other to promote safety.

Robert Kravitz is a frequent writer for the professional cleaning industry.

Cleaning Business Today's series of Case Studies continues with a discussion about how to most efficiently design your schedule. Drive time between jobs, or windshield time, can be a big expense. In the video below, Liz Trotter of Cleaning Business Builders speaks with Charmin and Mike Henderson of Happy House Cleaning.

Overwork and stress are common in the workplace, which is something businesses should take into account as they consider ways to reward their teams at the end of the year. N.J. Goldston recommends five ideas for showing appreciation, beginning with offering more flexible work schedules.

It’s not easy to standout online and reach new customers in the world of the internet. Being a hero in your business is hard work, you can’t ‘save everyone’ or ‘win every customer’ but you can win the right customers over by having a great online presence. Explore what it means to find customers specifically looking to hire a pro and increase your profits rapidly. Get takeaways on how to win the hearts of homeowners and be the hero in your industry.

Learn a few quick and easy strategies to get noticed by new customers. Understand digital trends and how to showcase your business so you can experience maximum growth

The ISSA Foundation is the philanthropic arm of ISSA, helping the cleaning industry attract and retain employees by connecting ISSA member firms with college students. The Foundation also promotes the well-being of the general public in several ways.

The mission of the ISSA Foundation is to raise and provide funds for scholarships, research grants, and other programs that promote the welfare of the general public as it relates to the sanitation, cleaning, and maintenance industry.

This mission is accomplished through generous donations from individuals and companies, most of whom are ISSA members. Contributions to the Foundation support the annual scholarship program and are tax-deductible. Members can easily make a donation to the ISSA Foundation when they renew their annual memberships. In 2018, residential members are eligible for ISSA Scholarships. Deadline to apply is March 1, 2018.

Maid Bright catered its fifth annual dinner at the Hypothermia Shelter on December 1, 2017. It has become their yearly tradition to share a meal with members of the community who seek shelter during the winter months of December through March.